John Oliver Gets Serious in Reaction to Trump’s ‘Extremely Conservative’ Supreme Court Pick: ‘It’s a F*cking Travesty’
John Oliver, who took a brief break last week after winning an Emmy, spent this Sunday’s Last Week Tonight lamenting President Donald Trump’s nomination for Supreme Court: Amy Coney Barrett.
“Trump is about to replace a liberal icon with an extremely conservative justice who has been called ‘the female Antonin Scalia,'” Oliver said of Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s likely replacement.
Oliver then explained the impact Barrett could have on the nation and listed key cases that have decided by just a single vote, such as stopping a prohibitive abortion law, upholding the Affordable Care Act, and protecting DACA.
“Should those issues come before the court again, they could now easily go the other way. And there is clearly no point holding on to hope that conservatives might choose to respect the precedent they set by refusing to even consider Merrick Garland in an election year, because that was always in bad faith, as was obvious at the time,” he added, referring to the Senate’s blocking of Former President Barack Obama’s nomination.
To highlight the Republican Party’s hypocrisy, Oliver played audio of Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC) from October 2016, saying, “If Hillary Clinton becomes president, I’m gonna do everything I can do to make sure that four years from now, we’ve still got an opening on the Supreme Court.”
“That’s a Republican senator admitting to blocking a justice confirmation not just in an election year, but for an entire presidential term,” added Oliver.
Oliver also went after Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) for supporting Trump’s nominee and went off on him for claiming that the country is “center-right.”
“What the hell are you talking about, Mitt?” Oliver exclaimed. “Set aside the notion that a court that gutted the Voting Rights Act is a ‘liberal court,’ since when is this nation naturally center-right?”
The late-night host continued to bash Romney, noting that more Americans align with the Democratic Party than the Republican Party, Americans are generally pro-choice, and 59 percent of the country believe that the winner of this election should choose Ginsburg’s successor.
“So, our country isn’t so much center-right as Mitt Romney is center-wrong,” Oliver added. “Look, this has been a very dark week for lots of people. The Supreme Court is about to lurch to the right for the foreseeable future, and if things seem hopeless right now, it’s because, to be completely honest, they basically are.”
“The unavoidable truth is that the system is already rigged and it’s rigged in a way that has allowed a party without popular support to drastically reshape an entire branch of government for the foreseeable future by appealing almost exclusively to white voters in some of the least populous parts of the country,” Oliver concluded.
“That is not a mandate or democracy. It’s a fucking travesty. We’re at the end of a generational battle and the heartbreaking thing is – we lost. It’s going to hurt for a long time for a lot of people. The next battle has to start right now. Sometimes fighting fire with fire is not enough. You have to fight mule piss with mule piss.”
Watch above, via YouTube.
